Volume 1

Journal of a voyage of discovery to the Arctic regions, performed between the 4th of April and the 18th of November, 1818, in His Majesty's ship Alexander, Wm. Edw. Parry, Esq. Lieut. and commander / by an officer of the Alexander.

Fisher, Alexander

Date:: [1820?]

Credit: Journal of a voyage of discovery to the Arctic regions, performed between the 4th of April and the 18th of November, 1818, in His Majesty's ship Alexander, Wm. Edw. Parry, Esq. Lieut. and commander / by an officer of the Alexander. Source: Wellcome Collection.

61/136 page 37

$k) the i^lrctlc Reg\'})9, 57 On Suntlar, July Jili, in the imnnlng, (wo of ihr natirrg of the Women Ulands came alongside of us In their canoes. 'I'hey informed us, through the medium of Snekhouse, tl»at the sen was open to the northward. VVe were told still further by them, (hat, during the whole of the last winter, they had not had any ice on this part of the coast. It is difTicult to reconcile this information with what we were told by the Danes to the south¬ ward ; since either the weather must have been milder here than to the southward, or one of the parties must have misled us, either through inadvertence or design. 'I'his afternoon we received two of the Esf|uimaux dogs from (he Isabella. Xot having spoken her since we left Jacob’s Bight, until the present time, we were, in the interim, under consider¬ able anxiety respecting the fate of Sackhousc, who happened to he on shore, when we were on the eve of sailing from the above place. V\’e W’ere happy to find, however, tliat he returned to the Isabella before we sailed. 11 is having been detained on shore so long, at the time alluded to, was occasioned by an accident which befcl him, in consequence of his owui folly, or, rather, of his ignorance ; for having overloade<l the musket he had with him, with a view' of making sure of killing his object, or, to use hi-i own words, ** more powder more kill,” it fractured his collar bone. VVe passed, on Monday, the Cth, several icebergs, one of which was aground in one hundred and twenty-three fathoms water. Its height above the surface of the water was ascertained by Lfeutenant Parry, by trigonometrical measurement, to be one hundred and twenty-five and a half feet, which is nearly in ^the proportion of one to seven above the water, such as we found if to be by the experiment made on the cube of ice on the ninth of the last month, June. Between these icebergs we found a considerable quantity of thin ice. In the afternoon the water bad an unusual, yellowish, muddy appearance ; but neither its temperature, nor specific gra¬ vity, indicated any particular change ; tlie former being 35’’, and the latter, 1026*6*, which did not differ materially from what we have found it to he for son}e days past. Several of the fishing ships were still in company : one of them, the Royal George, of Hull, killed a whale in the evening. During the forenoon of Tuesday, the were in some measure interrupted by large floes of ice, round which We had to sail in various directions, in order to get to the northward. In the afternoon, we got as far as a small grou]) of rockly islands, which are not laid down in any of our charts. 'Phey cannot he considered as belonging to the Women Islands, seeing that they are alx)ut fifty miles to the northw'ard of that group. They were r$